What are the steps to being taken seriously?There's room for discussion about games as an artform, but it's been shoved down by man-babies that get defensive whenever the artform is so much as criticized. They want to be taken seriously, with none of the steps of being taken seriously.
Don't make bomb threats against women who criticize the overt sexuality in games. Don't harass women in the games industry. Don't have a hissy fit when someone says they don't understand lets plays by flooding twitter with angry comments. Don't criticize games for "filling a quota" when characters of color/different sexualities are introduced to said games. Don't claim that criticism is "stifling the free speech" of developers. Embrace criticism. Realize that criticizing an aspect of a game doesn't mean it's under attack, or even that you can't still like the game (see: Quiet's design is shitty but I still love what I've played of MGSV).' That'd be a good start, imo.
I...can't tell if you're being sarcastic. So, yes, to a degree. Do you see that shit happen in film or with books? The key difference between the two mediums and video games, actually, is that rich people got to them first. As much as I have a general distaste for rich peolle, when you have an aristocracy that sets the rules, and then the medium goes down to the mid to lower class, yeah, bomb threats are generally filtered out. Every other medium has a balance between common denominator crap and art crap. Video games don't. In fact, we're seeing LESS art crap, because of a large subsection of immature angry people that don't want it, and an industry that doesn't get paid for making those types of art games.